I'll start college in about a week. It costs money. I don't have enough. So I have several options:

• Work. Probably the safest way. Least fun, too.
• Get a Scholarship. Once I'm in, it's the easiest way since I don't really need to do anything, besides doing my internship/bachelor thesis at the company granting me the scholarship. But I'd have to apply there which includes telling them why I'd like to work for them. And I actually don't want to - none of the partners I'm aware of develop games, and they certainly aren't Valve. So I'd feel somewhat miserable for telling lies and basically exploiting them.
• Make and sell a game.

As you might've guessed, I like the idea of making a game most.

I've been toying with this idea for quite a while, still another incentive is the Ludum Dare October Challenge: Finish a game - Take it to market - Earn $1. Sounds simple enough.

But my personal goal is to make about 7000x as much. Which should be pretty easy if I get my game on Steam and do a huge sale for 1 or 2 bucks. And I have at least 6 months, not just one. But getting a game on Steam is not that simple. Even making a game is not that simple.

"What's a simple to make game that'll make me a lot of money?" doesn't seem like the right question to me either. I keep thinking I should rather ask myself: "What would be a good game?" This is probably Valve's influence - they also think about the fun first and monetarization later.

So it has to be a fun game, it has to be simple, i.e. I need to be able to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Innovation would be nice, too. And I'd like to use my WIP engine/framework (for Renaissance), expanding it.

I don't really have a plan yet, but I have some general ideas. First of all, the game should be procedural. That cuts down the amount of assets/levels that need to be created, which saves time, besides I'm not really got at that anyway. Recently I thought: "Hey, physics are procedural in nature! What's a fun, simple and innovative physics based game?" Not much later I heard of Incredipede.

Another possibility are music based games, like Audiosurf, Beat Hazard and 1... 2... 3... Kick It! or The Polynomal. They require some research on music and how to procedurally generate events from a song, as well as a fitting game design. I'm not quit sure which is harder, but probably the latter. Because so far I have no idea.

Currently, I only have two game ideas. One of the is Jedi Academy: Renaissance, a huge project that I won't get finished anytime soon, besides I might get in legal trouble if I sold that (which I don't want to anyway). The other is a top down 2D shooter I've had in mind for about a year now, working title Invisibility. (Concept, progress) Hardly having done any MP coding this doesn't seem like such a good project for me and I'm not sure how well it would sell, I'd probably make it freeware. But it still seems like my best bet unless I get a better idea.

I don't know... I've had the idea for a year now and haven't realized it. Frankly I can't think of a better game right now and somehow feel like I should make it, so I may just make it. Heck, why not. Making a game is always a useful experience. Failing miserably can be, too. The only thing I know for sure is this:

If I do nothing, I won't get anything done.

So long,

Willi

Addendum

Luckily my family paid for University. I ended up taking a small job on weekends to get some disposable income, but didn't have to worry about tuition fees. I have yet to make money off making games.

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